Hard ticks, such as the American dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis), attach to their hosts and feed continuously on blood for several days during each life stage. When an adult female has obtained a blood meal, she mates, drops from the host, and finds a suitable site where she lays her eggs in a mass and dies. Six-legged larvae hatch from the eggs, move up on blades of grass, and wait for a suitable host (usually a mammal) to pass by. The odour of butyric acid, emanated by all mammals, stimulates the larvae to drop onto and attach to a host. After filling themselves with the host's blood, the larvae detach and molt, becoming eight-legged nymphs. Nymphs also wait for, and board, a suitable host in the same way as larvae. After they have found a host and engorged themselves, they also fall off, and then they molt into adult males or females. Adults may wait for a host for as long as three years.

Most hard ticks live in fields and woods, but a few, such as the brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus), are household pests. Soft ticks differ from hard ticks by feeding intermittently, laying several batches of eggs, passing through several nymphal stages, and carrying on their developmental cycles in the home or nest of the host rather than in fields.

Hard ticks damage the host by drawing large amounts of blood, by secreting neurotoxins (nerve poisons) that sometimes produce paralysis or death, and by transmitting diseases, including Lyme disease, Texas cattle fever, anaplasmosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Q fever, tularemia, hemorrhagic fever, and a form of encephalitis. Soft ticks also are carriers of diseases.

Adults range in size up to 30 mm (slightly more than 1 inch), but most species are 15 mm or less. They may be distinguished from their close relatives, the mites (mite), by the presence of a sensory pit (Haller's organ) on the end segment of the first of four pairs of legs. Eyes may be present or absent.

This group has a worldwide distribution, and all species are assigned to three families: Argasidae, comprising the soft ticks, and Nuttalliellidae and Ixodidae, together comprising the hard ticks. The family Nuttalliellidae is represented by one rare African species.